


W is for Waiting

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5888347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby struggles to come to the conclusion that it's time for him to stop waiting for Spencer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	W is for Waiting

Toby had thought about it first of all when he heard that Aria and Ezra had had the conversation about Ezra not following her to college. He hadn’t brought it up at the time, but he found himself wondering what would happen when Spencer left, whether he would join her or whether he would stay behind in Rosewood. 

On the one hand, he was progressing in his career here in Rosewood. In Lorenzo Calderon, he finally had a partner who was capable of being the kind of police officer Rosewood deserved, a far cry from the likes of Detectives Wilden, Reynolds and Holbrook. And if he stayed there, maybe he would have the chance to help turn Rosewood PD around from the inside. If he transferred to wherever Spencer was going to college, he’d have to start all over again with a new department, which possibly wouldn’t help his chances in his career. In Rosewood, he had the chance of doing some good.

On the other, it was thanks to Spencer believing in his innocence when the world believed him guilty of Alison’s murder that Toby was even able to join the police at all. Without Spencer, he doubted very much that he would be there at all. Could he really let that go? Would it not be the right thing for him to follow her wherever she went? Hanna and Caleb were going to New York together, should Toby and Spencer not try the same thing?

When he and Spencer eventually did have the conversation, they decided to try and make a go of it. Georgetown wasn’t that far away, Spencer could come back at weekends a lot more easily than Emily or Aria. At the time, they’d thought it would work, and for about the first year, it had. Spencer would come home for weekends, Toby would visit her in Georgetown when he could, and Toby thought that they could make it work. But over time, Toby was noticing that Spencer seemed less keen on returning for visits, and so often he’d find himself waiting by the phone for her to call. 

“She has her reasons for not wanting to come back to Rosewood,” Lorenzo had tried to explain. “Everywhere she goes back here, there’s something that reminds her of everything that happened with Charlotte DiLaurentis.” Taking Lorenzo’s advice on board, Toby had then tried suggesting that he be the one to make the visits to Georgetown instead of Spencer having to go back to the town that brought back so many bad memories. But Spencer had so often had some reason why it wasn’t convenient for Toby to visit on a particular date, and when he did visit, she was always dashing off for some reason or other. She’d decided to run for president of the college students’ union, andToby had made the mistake of surprising her with a visit right in the middle of her campaign. After a night waiting around in the student bar while Spencer was running around doing various campaign stuff, he was beginning to wonder why he had bothered. 

Eventually, they had agreed it was for the best if they called an end to their relationship. They had said that they would try to stay friends, and Toby believed that they would. There was too much history there for them to part company altogether, after all. But a part of him still wondered whether, once she was done with college, there could be any hope for them to get back together one day, if she ever returned to Rosewood.

She never did, of course. Toby tried to get on with his life, pursue his career, and try and stop himself waiting for Spencer to come back to him. Every so often, he’d see a glimpse of her on television any time there was anything on the news about Veronica Hastings’s campaign for the Senate, and he’d find himself wondering what might have been, but then he tried to put it out of his mind, carry on looking to the future. Spencer had her life in Washington now, she had the career she’d dreamed of ever since Toby had known her, she had no intention of coming back. It was best that Toby stop waiting.

Caleb understood. He and Hanna had been through the same thing back in New York, and for a while he had been waiting for her to come back to him too. They kept in touch, met up every so often, but over time they just stopped talking about Spencer and Hanna, because it had become easier that way. 

When Toby heard that Alison was asking her friends back to Rosewood to speak on Charlotte’s behalf, much as he mainly couldn’t believe that she would have even dared to make such a request, a part of him wondered all over again whether there might be hope. Then he dismissed it again. She’d be in town for a few days, max, then she’d go back to her new life, Toby would carry on with his. And he tried not to let himself hope again even once it had become clear that Spencer would be sticking around for a while until Charlotte’s murder had been resolved.

The day he received the phone call from Caleb, sounding really awkward as he admitted to Toby that he and Spencer were together now, was the day when Toby finally knew that he needed to stop waiting around, that Spencer wasn’t coming back to him. He’d have to take that leap into the future, start his life over just as she had started hers, it was time to let go. (Not, of course, that that was going to stop him having a few things to say to Caleb). But it was time to shut that door, make way for another to open.


End file.
